


Fans Against Archivization

by Anonymous



Category: Meta - Fandom
Genre: Academic Essays, Archives Are Not Neutral, Fan Labor, Fan Studies, Gatekeeping, Gen, I did research again, Implied/Referenced Ableism, MLA format because TCW's not my mom, Meta, Period-Typical Sexism, Social Sciences everywhere, There's a bibliography, acafandom, the human emotion of 'that's not how this works. that's not how any of this works'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:47:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29105805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Prompt:Inaccurate Foreign Country. A snapshot of a much larger and many-headed problem.
Relationships: Curatorial Fandom & Transformative Fandom, Fandom as a whole & The concept of archiving
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1
Collections: Anonymous, Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Fans Against Archivization

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** `Inaccurate Foreign Country`. A snapshot of a much larger and many-headed problem.

> _Curatorial fandom works to uphold and enshrine canon as authoritative and sacrosanct. That gets dangerous and entitled, unless it's balanced out by transformative fandom's culture of calling out, critiquing, deconstructing, and adding to a canon rather than enshrining and worshipping it._ (@ajaromano, Twitter thread, 2019.)

> _The health of authorial and fan fic-reading fandom is best served by strong central archives, and by a culture that recognizes the worth of archiving . . . [archives] can become very problematic indeed when archivists become curators_ (Versaphile, 2011.)

> _The need . . . to have a nonproblematic, pure, virginal archive, ready . . . to discover and exploit, almost by definition required the archivist to be an invisible caretaker, a docile handmaiden, the harem-keeper of the documentary virgins._ (Terry Cook, "The Archive(s) Is a Foreign Country", 2009.)

* * *

Versaphile's "Silence in the Library", a 2011 article in _Transformative Works and Cultures_ written in praise of the Archive of Our Own when the concept of such praise was relatively new, does, technically, pass the Tansey Test. Named for Eira Tansey, it's a Bechdel-like low bar: does a piece of writing about archives mention the existence, as independent people who go to and fro about the world, of archivists? "Silence in the Library" - like many other fan texts that bring the concept of libraries and archives into fandom more explicitly - does, strictly speaking, discuss the existence of archivists. A better question, and one that points to the heart of a fandom-wide issue understanding both data and our own spaces, is: if fans are aware that archivists exist, what, exactly, will they suffer them to _do_?

"Fan labor, a central issue of current fan studies, also remains an important feminist concern." (Busse 113)

'Transformative fandom', as a concept, predates its counterpart 'curatorial fandom' as well as defining it. For years before an actual Redditor offered up the comparison to curators - as in the people who preserve, exhibit, and manage objects on one nebulous side of the question of value for 'what they are' versus for 'what they do', as opposed to the other one - 'transformative fandom', describing an active, engaged audience that interacted consciously with both a piece of media and other members of the audience on that basis, was extant enough to be wandering in search of a designated foil.

With this dichotomy now comfortably established, critics like Romano fall into the trap of attempting to define any form of fannish audience - the participatory audience, the one that was established in the 90s _as_ "fandom" itself by contrast to other "viewers" - into the transformative side of this strict, gendered binary, while simultaneously asserting that an alternative mode of fan definitely exists, as a problem, just slightly out of reach.

Hoebink et al., meanwhile, provide a cautionary backstop for people who might be tempted to respond to this essay with the interpretation that all I've established is a confirmation of Versaphile's confident 'archivists good, curators bad' with at best a more nuanced definition of archiving. In "Exhibiting Fandom", describing the efforts of the museum now known as MoPOP, what they examine is its curators and other staff's uphill battle of "arguing that science fiction is worthy of official public attention and that these objects [associated with popular genre fiction] are worthy of preservation" (3.6) in order to "persuade museumgoers, many of whom have no special interest in science fiction, that science fiction is enjoyable and fascinating" (3.9): "[MoPOP's] curators, now distinct from [the founder] Allen's world of collectors and operating in the world of museums, must make the argument that science fiction is museum-worthy and has important things to say" (3.10) by caring for objects and making them accessible to audiences, working to contextualize why they're interesting and matter for outsiders and new fans, and ensuring that, for existing enfranchised fans, there is "the opportunity [for these media objects] to be experienced by those who value them and what they represent" (4.2). While fandom as a whole doubles down on using the name of the profession as a keyword for the selfish, unproductive gatekeeper, the curatorial staff - professionalized fans themselves - continually attempt to prove that genre fiction and its intricacies "are for everyone, and *therefore*, they are worthy of being placed in a museum" (3.21, emphasis added). Over there in museology, as if simply another door down the hall from archival theory, our neighboring fans who attain continue to labor towards sharing, validating, and preserving their own fandom, applying whatever power and resources they manage to acquire accordingly, just like everybody else.

**Author's Note:**

> **Bibliography**
> 
> @ajaromano. "Curatorial fandom works to uphold and enshrine canon as authoritative and sacrosanct. That gets dangerous and entitled, unless it's balanced out by transformative fandom's culture of calling out, critiquing, deconstructing, & adding to canon rather than enshrining and worshipping it." _Twitter_ , 22 May 2019, <https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1131173741122248704>
> 
> Busse, Kristina. "Fan Labor and Feminism: Capitalizing on the Fannish Labor of Love." _Cinema Journal_ , Vol. 54, No. 3, 2015, pp. 110-115., www.jstor.org/stable/43653438. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.
> 
> Caswell, M.L. "'The Archive' Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies." _Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture_ , Vol. 16, No. 1, 2016, <https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7bn4v1fk>
> 
> @cephiedvariable. "Yeah this is why I loved your tweet so much, esp in the context of “lore” and “continuity” obsessed nerd culture gaining such mainstream clout." _Twitter_ , 26 Apr. 2019, 2:43 p.m., <https://twitter.com/cephiedvariable/status/1121892508785610755>
> 
> Cook, Terry. "The Archive(s) Is a Foreign Country." In _Canadian Historical Review_ , vol. 90, no. 3, 2009; reprinted in _The American Archivist_ , vol. 75, 2011, pp. 600-632.
> 
> Hoebink, Dorus, Stijn Reijnders, and Abby Waysdorf. "Exhibiting Fandom: A Museological Perspective." _Transformative Works and Cultures_ , No. 16, 2014, <https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0529>
> 
> @nellcromancer. "I like that Homestuck implies that canonicity is something that obly the villains worry about." `(sic)`. _Twitter_ , 24 Apr. 2019, 4:56 a.m., <https://twitter.com/nellcromancer/status/1121020178744131584>
> 
> Romano, Aja. "Why the ending of Game of Thrones elevated the worst of fan culture." _Vox_ , 20 Jul. 2019, <https://www.vox.com/2019/7/20/18638718/game-of-thrones-ending-bran-stark-transformative-fandom>
> 
> Tansey, Eira. "Archives Without Archivists." _Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture_ , Vol. 16, No. 1, 2016. 
> 
> Versaphile. "Silence in the Library: Archives and the Preservation of Fannish History." _Transformative Works and Cultures_ , No. 6, 2011, <https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011/0277>


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